"However, like any business, continued innovation and awareness is key."
It’s our pleasure to introduce you to Irad Eichler, the founder and CEO of Circles, an online platform designed to provide emotional support to individuals dealing with life’s challenges.
The platform’s uniqueness stems from its ability to connect people experiencing similar issues, thus providing a safe and understanding environment for support and healing. From chronic illnesses, divorce, bereavement, and mental health issues, Circles provides a haven of emotional support that’s accessible 24/7.
Under Irad’s leadership, Circles has revolutionized the concept of support groups, making them more accessible, affordable, and effective. Whether you’re a single dad trying to navigate life after a divorce, a woman dealing with infertility, or an individual grieving the loss of a loved one or job, Circles is a platform where you can connect with others who truly understand your struggles.
The platform, which is both anonymous and free to use, has seen the formation of over a thousand groups since its inception, validating the pressing need for this kind of support system.
Irad’s innovative approach has filled a void in the e-therapy market, focusing on the therapeutic value of shared experiences and common struggles rather than the traditional one-on-one therapy model.
Check out more interviews with entrepreneurs here.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET FEATURED?
All interviews are 100% FREE OF CHARGE
Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Irad Eichler: I am the founder and CEO of “Circles”, an online platform that creates Circles of support for people experiencing life challenges.
Circles enable everyone dealing with a life challenge to receive on demand quality emotional support – from the very people going through the same thing.
We harness technology to design the best support solution for people facing chronic and acute illness, divorce, loss of a loved one, loneliness, and those who live with anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions.
If you were in an elevator with Warren Buffett, how would you describe your company, your services or products? What makes your company different from others? What is your company’s biggest strength?
Irad Eichler: Circles was founded in 2020 to provide an easier and more cost effective way for people to get help and support to cope with life’s hardships whenever they need it. Consider this: In the middle of the night when you are overwhelmed with grief, reeling from a job loss or just in need of someone who knows what you are going through, where do you turn?
Circles is modernizing the support group by empowering users to find emotional support from people who are dealing with the same issues, in real time, online, 24/7. The wide ranging topics of groups includes: single dads rebuilding their lives after divorce, adults coping with disability, women navigating infertility and people grieving the loss of loved ones or a job. Circles taps into the power of finding and giving support to those who are going through the same issues.
Since the launch of Circles, 1000+ groups have already formed validating the need that people need help and feel better connecting with others that face the same challenges.
The service opens up a powerful new path for support vs meeting one on one with a licensed therapist. Unlike traditional therapy, Circles fills a void in the e-therapy market by focusing on the therapeutic value of sharing and listening to others with the same pain, issue, or challenge. Gaining access to a licensed therapist isn’t always doable and professional therapy may not be the best fit.
At Circles, we tap into the power of peer-based support to make support accessible and affordable to everyone. We believe that sharing and listening to others with the same pain, issue, or challenge, is extremely therapeutic. At Circles, you’ll connect to a group of people in a safe space to get and give support.
With Circles, people never have to face their struggles alone. Circles is anonymous and free to users.
What advice do you wish you received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Irad Eichler: Entrepreneurs are inherently visionary and will have a lot of ideas at once. However I wish that someone had advised me to be laser focused and prove one thing and then grow from there.
For example, at Circles we provide emotional support services to people in need. Every person I met either had a challenge or knew someone in pain and everyone wanted a group for themselves or their friends.
At the beginning I was tempted to open more and more groups to meet the demand but it didn’t work as you need a certain number of members to open a group. We began to focus – working segment by segment. This approach increased the value that people were getting in each group and it allowed us to be more effective for our users.
Next quarter we will improve the tools that we provide to group guides to enhance peer support. For example, we will provide them with context based questions to ignite conversation between members. By leveraging AI, we can offer relevant ice breakers or questions to help the guides facilitate the conversation.
Here is a two fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Irad Eichler: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, is one of the best books ever written. Anyone who values individuality will value this book. For me, it taught me about lessons in excellence, leadership and always being true to yourself.
To summarize, the philosophy laid out in the book is that you should be authentic and creative. Some of the highlights: take responsibility for your own interests, wants, and needs; Never lie, including to yourself; don’t seek power over others; never say or do things just to please others; don’t use other people’s ideas if you have the capacity to create your own, and if you don’t have the capacity then give proper credit where it is due; never demand something of others unless you are willing to offer something of commensurate value in return; and don’t pretend that you can be more creative or industrious through a committee, as ultimately creative output occurs as the level of the individual.
The book that I have gifted the most is Byron Katie’s The Work Journal. It involves asking four simple questions about each belief that causes us pain:
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
- How do you react when you believe that thought?
- Who would you be without the thought?
After answering these questions, respondents are asked to come up with a “turnaround,” a sentence expressing the opposite of what one believes. I believe it is an incredibly powerful form of self-directed cognitive therapy. It can help people to get out of their mental ruts and to improve the quality of their lives.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Irad Eichler: The biggest challenge is to get people to look for help. You need to be vulnerable about your challenges in order to get and/or provide support. Right now we are experiencing a global mental health crisis and breakdown in community. People are struggling but may not know where to turn.
Additionally, individual therapy may not be the best fit and group therapy isn’t commonly offered online. Circles is another option and is a strong supplement to one-on-one therapy or stand-alone support for difficult issues, such as grief, in a friendly, peer-supported online environment.
It was my mission to provide an affordable and easy way for people to seek helpful support. However, like any business, continued innovation and awareness is key.
2020, 2021, 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Irad Eichler: In 2023, our motto is to focus on the core business and create growth engines. After every down period the markets rise again and we need to be prepared.
For Circles, it means expanding the reach of our audio rooms to new and growing segments like infertility, caregiving and people with disabilities. It also means allowing new members to open support rooms and provide them with the best tools to enable meaningful group interactions.
What does “success” in the year to come mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Irad Eichler: For me success is paying emotional support forward. In 2023, we are aiming to build up to 100K people to serve as facilitators that provide support to other people on Circles.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Irad Eichler for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Irad Eichler or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
